


sunken crowns, palaces drowned

by My_Bated_Breath



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: "I tried to kiss you to become human" to lovers, (hopefully) some fluff to make up for it, (that tag doesn't make much sense), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, F/M, Post-War, Post-canon but the canon has diverged, Slow Burn, Spirits, Zutara Drabble December 2020, begins with kataang, inspired by the Webtoon "Siren's Lament", lost Fire Nation prince AU, siren!Zuko
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 7,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27845167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_Bated_Breath/pseuds/My_Bated_Breath
Summary: Her heart is breaking, and no one else can see it.ORKatara meets a siren who wants her to forget, but when she's with him, all she can seem to do is remember.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 75
Kudos: 92
Collections: ZK Drabble December 2020





	1. prologue: a voice from the depths

The South Pole is so small.

Absurd, isn’t it? The South Pole — endless expanses of dark seas and pure ice, glaciers with crests that eclipse the sun, shadows as long as the valley between mountains. The South Pole — white and blue and black, so singular yet so universal, revealing colors within colors in the gradations between the sky and the water. The South Pole — the march of lost souls, ceaselessly wandering its infinite land. 

See that soul, the one peering over a precipice? She is a restless one; she is one who sculpts the land to her vision, one who parts the waves to reach the shore.

Her step does not falter — did not falter — until now.

Did you know that all the souls who journey to the South Pole are lost? Of course, there are some who are born here, little ones who appear with reddened cheeks and snowflake-covered lashes. She was born to this land; she belonged to its winter-swathed cradle.

She belonged here for a long time — until she did not.

Now, see her looking to the clouded night with that forlorn shroud over her expression. See the weightless sky that burdens her and the gravity that pulls her up, inevitably. See that she does not know. Not yet.

(Her footprints behind her are disappearing now, in this forever blurred landscape.)

All souls who journey to the South Pole are lost, and Katara of the Southern Water Tribe has just returned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who has too many commitments but is now trying to write for zk drabble december?
> 
> *sobbing in corner*
> 
> The plan is for this to be a multichapter drabble fic with each chapters corresponding to the day's prompt (which will hopefully be written in time...ish), save for the prologue and a few interludes. Maybe one day I'll even have an actual summary for this too.


	2. nightfall

This is how Katara spends her days.

At dawn, she wakes to sunlight shifting through the folds of her tent, curling onto dimness and chasing shadows to her feet. Warmth surrounds her being, body bound in blankets and mind bound in dreams, and the hint of coolness settling on her cheeks causes her to perceive the heat as even larger and slower than it is, submerging her inch by inch.

She is always a little reluctant to wake fully — the day is too blinding with light reflecting off endless expanses of white, and her unconsciousness is not yet willing to let go of its nonsensical imaginings. But of course, she has already rested for long enough, and there’s so much work to be done.

After she toes off her sleeping roll, her feet pushing it into a mess, she dresses in her furs before setting to her first task of the day — one of utmost importance to her family, a rich and symbolic tradition entrusted to her since she became their caretaker. Standing over her subject, she inhales.

“Wake up, you lazy snail-whale!”

With her brother successfully roused, she ignores his curses and incoherency and steps outside. A white glare blinks across her vision, but at the unaffected edges she makes out padding boots and swaddled legs, and then sound floods her in wringing cloth and chipping wood and striking metal.

She doesn’t need to see them to know them. They are weaving their nets and sculpting their boats and carving their spears. They are humming old stories and whispering new ones.

They are living the way they’ve lived for years.

Except when the light recedes, it’s not how she thought it would be. She sees waterbenders from the North Pole lashing water whips and raising ice walls. There’s a sharp and steel-like precision to the way they stand and talk and correct their village into a city. Everyone still has a role, of course, but with how they take to their craft, it’s like the marrow has been sucked out of the bones.

She has mistaken the sound of life for the sound of rebuilding.

As she reabsorbs the sight before her, Sokka joins her at the tent entrance. Pride and anticipation gleam in his eyes.

“What are you waiting for, Katara?” He turns to her. “You’re coming along too, aren’t you?”

 _That’s right_ , she thinks.

Then she steps forth, architectural plans unfurled in her hands and snow palaces waiting at the tip of her fingers.

_That’s right._

* * *

Before she leaves, she touches the cool stone resting at her neck. She traces the carving faithfully, both by hand and by heart, and finds a little strength, a little conviction, in what it represents.

* * *

She works. Diligent. Meticulous. Persistent. Dutiful. By the time the sun is sinking into the horizon, her breaths are short and labored, and the sweat that has lingered on her neck for hours is almost frozen. Her limbs drag with fatigue and she wants nothing more than to collapse and hold still for an eternity, but instead, she smiles, her accomplishment bringing liveliness to her steps.

Nonetheless, she soon deems the burden of movement to outweigh her earned vivacity. Her steps pause. She looks up. 

The skies are bright shadows touching everything, everywhere. But somehow, she, at the hems of the world, feels unreachable. The fading colors chill her.

It looks like spilled gold.

* * *

Nightfall alights the snow with the face of sunset, glowing with the flickering of dying embers, and the South Pole falls asleep to a world hidden away, looming walls and lofty spires crumbling away to silhouettes, where its people finally lay themselves bare.

* * *

Katara wakes up gasping in the dark. 

There is no conscious thought, just intrinsic need and instinct, when her hands clap down onto her neck.

Grasping, clinging, she traces.

It’s not a wave. It’s not a wave. Why isn’t it a wave?

(The stone is new and indifferent. It is an object that carries no history, drawn up from hollow feelings — _no, that’s wrong, it still has meaning_ , she tries to tell herself, _of_ _forever promises made to her by the balcony_ —)

But it’s not the same.

She sobs.

* * *

It’s useless to try to sleep again.

Katara wants to be able to close her eyes and conjure up fairytales and indulge herself in make-believe, but there’s no moving on or undoing her haunting.

Maybe she’s not trying hard enough to be okay. But isn’t _trying_ all she ever does?

She doesn’t know. She doesn’t care.

Eventually she finds herself by the frozen shore, staring into the black void of the ocean. The waves are as gentle as the moonlight, and tonight they whisper when they pass each other by. She almost believes they’re whispering to her too — the water has always called her before, but this feels heavier and older somehow, like the ocean itself is beckoning her.

Katara peers over the edge.

It’s dull and distorted, but she can see the shadow of her blue eyes on the water. Then her reflection ripples, opaque shapes drawing up to the surface, and the shadows and the colors and the moonlight dance together into a blurred brilliancy — without thinking, Katara leans closer, and her body is tipping forward, her figure spilling into the image —

Spilling, spilling, spilling into gold eyes staring back up at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at me, not lingering in the exposition for too long and instead throwing you all into this AU with no context and hmm now there's gold eyes, I wonder who that could be-


	3. please don't lie

A boy rises from the sea.

At first he’s little more than an outline, one smoothed by water that slides off him in glass sheets. Silver shines on his skin, pale as the snow, and he looks just as delicate — as if a touch is all it takes to melt him, a breath to blow him away. With only her imagination to sketch in definitive lines, he is everything and nothing and immaterial, and the space he occupies may as well be empty because of it.

It doesn’t make sense. The description doesn’t match the reality. Her eyes perceive his existence but her mind adjusts her perspective, casting him in ethereality and fleetingness. _He can’t be real_ is the natural conclusion, and that’s absurd, but the alternative is even more inconceivable.

Boys don’t miraculously appear from the sea. Not in the South Pole, not when its waters are as cold as death itself.

So. This is what happens when it becomes too _much_. Her unspeakable dread — the one that creeps up her arms and twists sinuously around her neck as soon as nightfall unravels its drapes — cannot manifest in words so instead, it is dissenting with illusions.

That’s fine. That's reasonable. In the next second, she will turn around and march herself back home, whereupon she will tuck herself into bed and forget this all as some fever dream.

Yes, Katara is resolved to do just that.

(Of course, she does not do just that. Because if the boy can be described as transient, then Katara is the polar opposite.)

She stays motionless before him, a statue.

“Don’t you have something to say?”

The voice ( _his voice?)_ feels false somehow, too grand to be contained in words. It’s unnatural, which causes her throat to seize, and ironically enough, she can’t answer him.

To her lack of a response, the manifestation of her disquietude sighs.

“Don’t be stubborn. These may be your last words—” he sweeps a hand back through his hair, sending beads of water flying over an expectant stare, “—as Katara of the Southern Water Tribe.”

Her blood pounds through her ears, deafening, and the rest of the world falls to pieces.

“How—” she asks, her tongue numb and automatic, “—do you know my name?”

He tilts his head up towards her question. The moonlight chases the darkness from his face, and she sees him differently now — sharp jaw, gently curved nose, downturned lips — filling in angles and slopes in the places where he used to be void. Now, he’s less intangible, more substantial, maybe even a little _human_. 

“I listened,” he says simply. “Lots of people talk about you, even when you’re not there to hear it.”

( _Less comprehensible, more substantial, maybe human—_ )

Her gaze follows up to his upper cheeks, his eyes, and his expression comes into severe focus, so much so that it’s dizzyingly clear. He is flawless symmetry, alabaster skin harmonizing with the shape of his eyes and arches of his brows, made of beauty so immaculate that it hurts to look at him. And it unsettles her too because it’s like a separate image layered onto him, just close enough for the cracks to remain unseen.

This is how she expected him, grace so divine it’s rendered meaningless, because, _because_ —

“You’re not real,” she whispers. “How can you listen to conversations you’re not a part of?”

Only after the words left her mouth did Katara grasp the full weight of her unintentional disrespect. The thought was blurted out without account for whose presence she is in — a boy, a _being_ , with unknowable power and wrath.

Yet all he does is looked confused.

Then, the meaning clicks. He scrunches his nose in disdain. “What, do you think I’m a figment of your imagination?”

“...Yes,” she admits with some reluctance. “Boys don’t pop out from the sea. That’s impossible.”

He considers this for a moment. “Maybe human boys don’t,” he says. Propping his arms up on the snow-covered shore, he leans forward and smiles mockingly. It brings him closer, close enough for her to make out a shadow swishing below him, elegantly curved and shaped like a current.

Her eyes widen. She forgets to breathe. 

“But just because I’m not human doesn’t mean I’m not real.”

He reaches out. His hand, still wet yet somehow warm, grasps her chin and draws her face down. Katara is helpless to it.

“Wouldn’t it be nice to be that way?” His voice shifts into something lilting and enticing, almost musical in its quality. “To give up the burdens of human life and live somewhere in-between?”

“I—I can’t.”

“You can,” he murmurs in her ear. “Even more than that, you want to. Do you know why?”

Mutely, she shakes her head.

“You’re heartbroken.”

The only sound then is that of the waves splashing over the ice, but that becomes a distant echo in her mind, forgotten. Stunned, Katara can only stare at the boy ( _no, he cannot not be called a boy—)_ submerged in the shallow waters. His eyes burn through her.

“I’m not heartbroken,” she chokes out.

Katara holds too much love to be heartbroken. She loves her father, who she sees every day among their tribesmen with his feet firmly grounded, who no longer sails off for years and years on a boat that disappears over the horizon. She loves her brother, who had stood by her when the snow turned to black ash and charred flesh, who had seen the rest of the world with her because he refused to let her go alone. She loves her friends — Toph, Suki, and Aang—

Aang — she’s in love with Aang. She had waited for him all her life, for when the Avatar would restore peace and balance, and he had given her even more than that. Together, they mastered water; together, they saved cities and nations. And together, next spring, they will be married.

She’s not heartbroken.

“Don’t lie. I can feel the pain you carry, and how its weight is pulling you to the ocean depths. That is why you came here tonight.”

“You don’t understand—”

“I understand enough.” There’s nothing she can say against it because her neck feels too tight, her betrothal necklace too heavy. “If anything, you don’t understand.”

His words grow softer, as if to offer her reassurance, wavering with something that almost makes him seem wistful. “But that’s okay.”

“That’s okay." His lips are so near that she feels the slightest brush of movement against her mouth.

“You’ll forget it all in the end anyways.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you couldn't guess, this is where the _"I tried to kiss you to become human" to lovers_ tag comes into play. Is that a spoiler? It probably isn't. It's literally a tag, after all.
> 
> Anyways this took like, 1.5 hours longer to write then I wanted it because somehow this ended up to be over 1k long. That, and I'm a slow writer :')


	4. heavy hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I bring you a chapter whose word count far exceeds what it's supposed to be. Hopefully it won't be too jarring when I switch to like... 200 word chapters *cries*

_“Are you sure this is for the best?”_

_High above the ocean, shifting blues smooth into a plane; ceaseless movements gloss over. Even with Appa never faltering in his direction, flying forward without hesitation, Katara cannot distinguish one stretch of water from the next._

_Still, she tries to feel for the waves, cresting and falling. Their tumultuous stability has always granted her comfort._

_Her arms extend down._

_She feels nothing._

_Then, a careful touch. From behind her, Aang’s palms fit into the backs of her hands, pulling her arms back up into an embrace. Quietly, he speaks._

_“The monks used to say that when we experience loss, our spirits are anchored by material possessions since they are a form of attachment. Sometimes our grief is too much to bear, and we need that anchor.”_

_His arms move away so that his hand ghosts the ribbon on her neck. “But to heal, we have to be free.”_

_Gaze cast downward, she turns around, somber. The expression on Aang’s face makes him look older, and it’s in moments like these that she’s reminded how innocence can be tarnished in one hundred years._

_“The war is over now, Katara, and all the ideals we’ve fought for will finally come true. Don’t you think we deserve to move on?”_ Don’t you think you deserve to move on?

That’s right _, she thinks._

_She unclasps her mother’s necklace and holds it out in front of her. Suspended from the worn and tattered ribbon, the wave carving glimmers with the same light as the one shining on the ocean. Next to her, Aang pulls out Gyatso’s pendant._

_Traditionally, the Air Nomads would burn their dead and scatter their remains into the wind. To mourn, the Water Tribe would tie shrouded bodies to driftwood and send them out to sea. In the air and over the water, their cultures fuse into bittersweet harmony._

That’s right.

_They will move on together._

* * *

_As soon as she lets go, it’s as if the entire ocean sucks itself into the stone, calling to her with a feeling so strong that she is almost dragged down with it. Agony thrashes through her, like a piece of her soul had been torn out, just as painful as throbbing flesh and pulsing blood, and she grasps desperately onto the thread of water, the thread of ribbon, but she can’t even see the stone anymore; it’s the same color as the ocean._

_Then, the atmosphere combusts. The heat sears her skin, leaving it red and raw. The sky blackens the way snow does when mixed with ashes. And in the distance, she sees one last flash of pale blue before it cracks and erupts into flame._

_“No!” Tears spring to her eyes and are immediately evaporated. “Mom—”_

_“Katara,” Aang says next to her, except it isn’t Aang anymore when she turns around and sees a hazy visage, one who looks like her but with pulled-back hair and older eyes._

_“Katara,” Kya says, her voice as hard as a gravestone._

_“I’ll never forgive you.”_

* * *

He feels her wake in the middle of the night.

One and a half years ago, the day after the comet had streaked the sky in blood and fire, he felt a shift in the currents. The ocean was always at war, all colliding waves and salt spray, but that was the first time he felt an element of calmness to the waters.

Then he heard it, by bustling ports and sailing ships, in distrustful murmurs that turned into hopeful whispers that turned into elated cries.

The war had ended. Peace had begun — and with it, so had the stories.

Of course, there was the Avatar, victor over the cruel Fire Lord, but there were others that stood by him. A Water Tribe strategist who felled an entire fleet. An earthbender who warped the airships’ metal bodies. A Kyoshi Warrior armed with fans who danced with lethal grace.

A waterbender who, alongside the rightful heir to the Fire Nation throne, defeated the mad princess.

The stories surrounding Katara of the Southern Water Tribe speak of her power and defiance, her compassion and nurture, her resilience and persistence. 

They never speak about how, in the dark, her heart bears itself to break.

* * *

The shore is a shadow above him.

He lurks.

He waits.

* * *

“But that’s okay,” he says, tinging his voice to something more enticing, bewitching, misleading. It would be simpler to sing, but a part of him objects to that strain of manipulation — it feels too much like pulling on puppet strings.

“That’s okay. You’ll forget it all in the end anyways.”

Just when he thinks he has her, just when their lips are about to meld together, a fire lights in her eyes and she jerks back, pushing on his shoulders. He splashes into the water, water which is pulling back into a towering wave, water which sweeps him back with crushing force. Head spinning, he doesn’t resist when he’s pushed into the depths.

It takes him a minute or two to recover. By the time he surfaces, all that’s left is a trail of footprints.

A snowfall stirs from clouds that hang over the moon.

Gradually, her footprints disappear.

* * *

At dawn, Katara wakes up to tent folds tied so tightly that not a single beam of sunlight sifts through, leaving only a vague suggestion at the day’s brilliance through the thick cloth. She is cold with a shadow that hangs over her, one shaped like a siren’s tail.

“Nothing happened last night,” she says. Sokka, who is still asleep, doesn’t answer.

* * *

_Please don’t lie._

* * *

Katara is still shaken from the nonexistent events that never occurred. She freezes water into a spiraling fractal — a flower-like decoration for the interior of an elegant dining hall — but then she slips, fingers contorting to a twitch of remembrance, and the flower becomes lopsided.

Forcing the ice back into liquid, she releases it with a dismayed splatter. 

“Wow. So that was a failure. You’re going to mess up the design at this rate,” Sokka tells her, having wandered over from his centered position from which he directs the dining hall’s construction. Just as Katara considers bending her failure into Sokka’s face, he adds with uncharacteristic thoughtfulness: “Are you okay?”

“...No.” She doesn’t like lying to her brother, but her admittance here doesn’t have to be a concession. “But is anyone really okay?”

His eyebrows furrow at her question. “Is there a reason why you’re being so philosophical today?”

When it becomes clear that she won’t answer his question until he answers hers, Sokka relents.

“I guess, if you think about it, most people aren’t _okay_. Everyone has lost something to this war, and as long as they’re still feeling it in some way, _they_ can’t move on. Then _we_ can’t move on because the world has to be in harmony.”

Katara thinks about the empty Air Temples and Aang struggling to redefine the airbenders’ legacy. About the walls and broken bonds dividing the Earth Kingdom, and the toiling masses of the impoverished. About Fire Lord Iroh, hollowed from losing his son and his nephew, then broken from losing his niece.

About herself.

She brushes a thumb over the carving at her throat, now a depiction of a gust of wind and a stream of water. Sokka doesn’t miss the motion.

He sighs. "I'm not as good as these hope speeches as you are, but it’ll be okay, got it?” He pats her head, and embarrassingly, she finds herself leaning into it. “We have each other, after all.”

“Yeah,” she echoes, heart lightening. “We do.”


	5. blame it on me

With a collective sweep of their arms, a group of waterbenders — a crowd of blue parkas lined with white fur — uplift snow and raise it into a liquid, suspended midair as a small twisting river. Pushing through the water’s weight with slow care, they diverge in their movements symmetrically, curving the stream, extending and narrowing, guiding it through an arc until both ends touch the ground.

Then, they hold it.

Still, stiller, stillest.

The current slows to a stop. A chill cracks and shakes through the water, and it freezes into an ice archway.

Katara releases her grip, tension slipping from her muscles, and steps back. The entrance to the newly built palace is moon-curved grace and star-flecked splendor, evoking the same quiet strength of the princess it is modeled by.

When Sokka sketched the architectural plans for a village-turned-city, he drew up a palace at the map’s center, a place where the new leaders of their tribe will guide them into an era of peace. Next to him, their father, reminiscing about the warriors that have fallen under his command, then suggested that before they look to the future, they should commemorate sacrifices from the past.

Sokka had been pensive, lost in his sketches.

“Wow,” someone breathes out beside her. Katara turns and sees Amka, a Northern healer who learned waterbending after the war, gazing at the arch shaped in the style of Yue’s hair.

When Katara first met her, Amka told her that she, among many other healers, was inspired to learn waterbending because she finally knew courage — Katara’s courage. Yue’s courage.

Resplendent in the snow, the palace is a striking vision, but knowing the meanings woven into its structure strikes at something more. Amka blinks rapidly for a moment, then casts her eyes down with a tearful smile.

“It’s beautiful.”

Yue’s visage, lucid and transparent, floats up to Katara’s mind. She remembers when her body dissipated to mist, wisps, nothing.

“I’m going to start on some of the house plans we have,” Katara says, already turning away.

“You’re not going to take a break, Master Katara? We just finished, after all…”

She looks back one more time, and something inside her twists at the thoughtful looks on everyone’s faces. Here, there’s too much space and not enough, a ponderous silence that stretches and stretches—

“No. I have more work to do.”

—and Katara does not want to snap.

(The silence unsettles her. She doesn’t know why.)

* * *

 _Katara,_ she imagines Sokka saying to her. _Loss will root you to one place._

 _I won’t be rooted,_ she says back. _The only way to keep yourself from looking back is to always look forward._

* * *

“Master Katara, why are you still here?”

Katara is studying a piece of land, walking the perimeter and gauging its magnitude. Just like with the palace, this snow will be raised into ice, into a home.

Her mind runs through the sequence of techniques that she’ll have to employ for its construction. Distractedly, she answers Amka.

“I can’t give up now, I have to keep fighting.”

The words hang over them, bare.

“Fight?” Amka asks. “Why would you fight when the war’s already over?”

* * *

That night echoes back whenever her mind wanders free a moment too long, opening a gap in her defenses and slipping through, and it comes armed with a thousand needles and a thousand cuts, pricking and sinking until her skin breaks open and she begins to bleed and it whispers a message to carry back to her veins, to her chest—

_You’re heartbroken._

(She clutches at that soft ribbon and suffocating rope and at the truth that it’s not a loss it’s not a loss _it’s not a loss_ —)

* * *

He can’t win.

She won’t let him.

* * *

One week passes, and Katara fights.

She attacks empty space, sculpting in doors and windows.

She defends against openness, paving the slope of a rooftop.

She turmoils tirelessly to vanquish her own mind.

(She fails.)

* * *

Standing in a house of her own making, Katara twists her fingertips with the same motions as plucking a petal, drawing out the ice into the spiraling fractal needed to complete the building’s design.

With ease, with softness, with deliberation—

Her fingers lurch back too quickly.

The ice shatters for the seventeenth time.

* * *

One week passes, and Katara is on the icy shore again.

One half of her still clings to the hope that the boy (the _siren_ ) is just a dream, but the other half remembers the stories her grandmother used to tell her about the spirits, remembers the lightest flutter whispered to her lips. So she’s more disappointed than surprised when he emerges from the waves.

Not willing to repeat past mistakes, she stands far apart from him where she cannot be reached, legs and arms held in a waterbending stance.

“It’s your fault,” she prefaces.

He doesn’t say anything, and she doesn’t do anything, and his stare and silence unnerve her.

So many words are caught in her throat, but for once in her life, Katara doesn’t have a speech prepared.

He is rooted.

She is not.

She leaves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned out very different from what I intended it to be about when I started writing - I wanted subtlety, which is maybe a little too much for me to handle when I'm dealing with so many unexplained elements in the story so far, but ultimately I think this sort of break and slivers of introspection (only *slivers* though, we can't have her becoming too self-aware) enriches Katara's character. And well, I'd become insane if I had to write another 1k words today because I wanted to fit in all the scenes I had planned.
> 
> Anyways, please let me know your thoughts - I'm not doing much planning for this fic in terms of scenes so I would love to know if something is confusing or can use improvement. Thank you!


	6. little pieces

Her mother used to show her how everything has a spirit.

She would clasp Katara’s mitten-covered hands and point to the mountains in the distance, painting pictures of unshakable souls surging towards sky. Then she would reach up, stretching on her toes, and capture air in her hands, catching little wisps of scattered essence.

Of course, everything has a voice as well. Stones shake in rumbling tones. Clouds loom in lingering echoes. Fires flicker with crackled murmurs. And the waves — _be careful of the water,_ Kya once told her, _sink too deep and your love will drown you_ — the waves sing.

Everything has a spirit, but spirits have no substance. They can have crimson tails that gleam with koi scales, and they can have warm hands and warmer lips. They can hold the ocean’s song inside their lungs, drink it in like water breathed in, but if she ignores their calls and walks on, their voices will shatter into fragments, dissipate into spray and mist.

* * *

Katara calls back.

 _It’s all your fault_.

She relents to the boy, the spirit, the siren, and is set adrift in a tide she cannot bend.

* * *

An abrupt question. “Do you remember the story Gran Gran used to tell us, the one about sirens?”

Sokka wrinkles his nose. “You mean the sirens who seduce sad people and turn them into fish folk?”

“Yes,” she says urgently. “But they do it because—”

“Are you that worried something will ruin your engagement to Aang?” Sokka cuts Katara off. He waves a dismissive hand. “Don’t be.”

“It’s all just a myth anyways.”

* * *

Five nights later, she returns to the shore.

“You’re just a myth.”

“Sure, I’m a myth. A myth that’s real.”

“I don’t care whether or not you’re real, just leave me alone.”

“That’s funny.” He says, staring pointedly at her spot on the ice, at the footprints trailing behind her. “I thought you’re the one who came to me.”

* * *

Katara is becoming distracted.

* * *

Four nights, and she gives in again.

Her throat is raw and aching as the simmering in her gut comes to a boil and she shouts and she screams and she cries. All the unspoken words are tugged out in their full forms, but as soon as they pour out from her tongue their existence diminishes from a secret to a void — she wishes she can hear what she’s saying, play it back to herself until it builds a sanctuary around her ears, but all she can feel is her mouth’s desperate movements and a ringing suffocating her mind, stealing away her hearing — reduced to incoherency, she loses sight of what she is here for — the boy with the flawless face — as he warps to a rough haze in the tide of her angry tears — tears that sweep through her shell, tears that leave her empty.

* * *

“Please be careful, my dear. You’re walking on fragile ground.”

Her grandmother says nothing more, yet somehow her silence says everything.

* * *

It only took three nights.

“Can’t you undo it or fix whatever you did to me? Isn’t there some kind of spell for this?” She appears before him unaffected because their encounters are trivial by now — nothing significant happened the last time they met.

He glowers and presses his body forward, more towering, more close to her. Nevertheless, considering how many strides apart they are, it doesn’t have much impact. “Sorry, I don’t do magic tricks. And if anyone’s under a spell, it’s me.”

She wanted to ask him about that before. Maybe she demanded it out of him three nights ago when everything was garbled and tangled and messy, except she doesn’t remember any of that now, and she’s a little thankful for it.

No, she doesn’t want to ask him. It’s merely a self-sabotaging compulsion, a morbid curiosity.

She doesn’t want to ask him. 

Ignoring him, she pushes on.

“Okay, so what if you reassess me then? What you said before was wrong and I can prove it.”

“This isn’t an assessment! You can’t just keep trying and trying without actually changing. I can _feel_ that you’re heartbroken—”

“Stop!" she bursts out. "My heart isn’t broken so I don’t need any fixing, okay?”

Silence descends upon them.

Cold. Mocking.

Revealing.

* * *

“Hey, Katara.” Her father’s hand falls onto her shoulder. “Everything okay?”

As if plucked from a worn thread, the gentle touch and worried words weave her into another scene, one where she is cloaked in red and hidden away on a stolen Fire Nation ship, brimming with relief from seeing the Avatar disoriented yet awake.

Back then, Hakoda asked her the same question. But this time she was not inexplicably dismayed by his appearance — one that, over the years, faded into an outline where a figure should have been — the specter-like presence she is concerned with now is a wholly different monster.

“I will be—” Katara grits her teeth, “—as soon as I get this right.”

The water in her hands feels whittled and worn. Even as the element of change and fluency, it can only shift through so many imperfections and flaws — it can only erase so much of the solidity to her mistakes — before the sheen on its surface dulls.

Blades sharpening to a tip. Unfolding with gradual care, the ice blossom’s rounded petals meet at a point.

“That looks great,” Hakoda tells Katara. “You’ve done well.”

She shakes her head. The angles are too severe, resembling a frozen razor more than anything like the gentle beauty it is supposed to express.

Cradling her creation closer to her chest, she skims her fingertips over its crown in a light caress.

Red blooms on brown skin.

“Oh,” her father says. “Oh.”

* * *

Two nights.

* * *

When the skies fade to black, they are always full of bright, broken little pieces.

Sometimes it’s a flurry of snowflakes, white and wet and blinking into open eyes. Sometimes it’s the stars, little pinpricks pushed through heavy fabric. 

Gray clouds drift aimlessly in the even more aimless darkness. Waves roar back before throwing their weight onto the shore, violent and fatal. He is not here.

Unclasping her hands, Katara grips onto her ice blossom with the tightness of finality, and then wrenches her arm back and _throws_.

The sea swallows it whole.

* * *

Question: Will it melt like snow or burst like stars?

Answer: It doesn’t matter, as long as he finds it before it breaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Question: How does one write interactions with an impossible, mythical being?  
> Answer: It's time for your author to use the Five Stages of Grief because she is in desperate need of inspiration!
> 
> As always, feedback is much appreciated because I'm iffy on my writing and characterization, though I think I got it mostly right? At least, I hope I did. Also I have the next chapter pre-written, so hopefully that's something to look forward to :)


	7. make whole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought this chapter was groundbreaking when I was writing at 3 am. Although it's not 3 am anymore, I still hope this can retain a little bit of that wee-hours-of-the-morning impact here.
> 
> This is a direct continuation of the previous chapter, so if you've forgotten everything that's happened so far (not that there's really that much) you may want to skim that one again. Otherwise, please read O:)

One.

* * *

“It isn’t very kind to throw chunks of ice at someone, you know.”

His greeting is unconventional and startles her, but her surprise is quickly replaced by embarrassment.

“You were there?” _You were waiting for me?_

The question goes unaddressed. “That thing you threw was supposed to be a flower, wasn’t it?”

A hint of reluctance, a sliver of vulnerability. “...Yes.” Then: “But I could do it if you weren’t always trying to make me doubt myself—”

“Were you trying to make it off someone else’s plan?” He ignores her again. “Are you trying to copy a pre-drawn design?”

Like curtains unraveling over her vision, scrolls upon scrolls upon scrolls unfold in her mind, notes marking exact measurements and precise placements. Her home is inundated by a sea of pages which she carries with her everywhere, letting the sketches draw in her routine. But it’s not copying, it’s rebuilding—

“How did you know that?”

He points above the dipping slope of the shore to her village, the one that’s becoming a city. “Your new buildings and houses are just that — new. The architecture has changed—” _not that there was much architecture before,_ Katara thinks to herself bitterly, “—into this sharper style. It feels… more systematic, almost?”

Katara opens her mouth, about to ask him what any of this has to do with her, but then he continues on. “And you’re the one who makes most of these new buildings and houses. The people here talk about how dedicated and hardworking you are. Then, sometimes I can even see you from the water, working on a tower or something.”

Submerging his hands underwater, he cups his palms together and holds out a small ocean for her to see. “Your ice flower had the same pattern as the rest of the architecture. Neat, and ordered, and manufactured.”

He raises his eyes to meet hers. “But it’s wrong.”

“Manufactured yet wrong,” Katara echoes thinly. “That makes no sense.” Which she should’ve expected by now, given his very first conclusion about her was — _is_ — wrong.

“No, listen to me. This style — your technique… it’s not yours. You’re trying too hard to stick to a stricter kind of bending so that you can replicate another person’s design. But your water doesn’t want to be controlled by anything other than what you want.”

 _That makes no sense_ , Katara wants to say again. _You’re not even a bender._

But she cannot speak.

“Your bending is drawn upon your own source.” His voice grows more and more distant as if he’s no longer in the present moment. But his words reach out to something resonant, transcendent, so maybe she is the one who is lost somewhere else. “You must master the basics before you can advance. You must have an unbreakable root.”

“...I am a master,” she says, yet the statement comes without the steel armor it’s usually coated in. Regardless, he doesn’t seem to hear her.

For the first time since the night she met him, she meets him at the boundary between the shore and the sea. The shallow pool is still pouring from his hands, veils of water seeping in between the cracks.

“Unbreakable root, is it?” she murmurs. She touches her fingers to his.

All this time, she was trying to bring the water up into ice, tugging it towards the sky as if it could be treated as a thread of air, weaved in and out with meticulous detail. But her element already has a preexisting rhythm, a flow, a _pull_ , calling for it to sink into gravity in between the slips and the whispers.

_Your water doesn’t want to be controlled by anything other than what you want._

A sudden motion — she splays out her hand and the water answers her in little pieces, in heavy torrents, breaking free from the cradle of his palms and rushing toward the sea. But before it can reach the surface, Katara seizes her fingers back into a fist and it coils back, curling back in on itself in unrepeated loops and asymmetric curves that harden into ice.

That jolts him out of his daydream. The boy gives the ice clinging onto the back of his hand a wide-eyed stare.

Then, slow and deliberate, he turns it over.

It’s flawed. It’s jagged and soft, sweeping and narrow. It’s uneven and imprecise and unlike any of the designs in their architectural plan. It’s so, so flawed, and yet—

She has created a perfect ice blossom.


	8. interlude: a voice from the shallows

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to FidgetWibbles, whose wonderfully lovely comment guilted me into finishing up this chapter when I had it in my drafts for over a month. And of course, nire and LadyAniko, if you're reading this (I hope you do, eventually!), you already know this but I admire you both so much and adore your comments.

The South Pole is death.

Heartbeats cease upon jagged daggers of ice. Blood chokes in ribbons in the water. When the winter storms descend upon them, wrath known by whipping winds swallowing them in snow, their intertwined hands are torn apart and left seeking in the blinding white, searching for someone who may already be a corpse.

Stories are how you stay alive. They are the threads woven through tattered tapestries that, bound by love and tradition, perpetuate their fates together. They are the warmth seeping into oracle bones, cracking open forgotten fortunes, revived fortunes. They protect from the hunger, the cold, the wilderness.

But some dangers are less physical, less perceptible, and they fester in the wildness that curls and coils in unseen shadows, slowly practicing their grip, gradual and deliberate.

The stories about wild abandon and wild despair may just be the most important, and yet they are the most overlooked. They are reduced to something simple — here is the monster; here is how you pretend they don’t exist.

(Here is the siren; here is how he does not exist.)

Far from the shallows, where it is safe for the children to play and for the weary to rest, the ocean is vast and cold and forbidding. Shark-like shadows dart around the current, and their teeth glint just as sharply. They have mouths that can consume someone whole — whole as in _whole_ , beyond the body and to the soul, to the proof of their existence.

But it is not their ugliness that defines the serrated edge to their threats.

No, it is their beauty that is the most sinister.

First, they seek out the lost and the weary, the strongest broken ones. Then, they pull out despair from where it hangs on a bloodied thread wrapped around your too-tight heart and drag it out into a full realness that leaves your chest a shell.

Finally, they hold that despair, and they lie.

_If I can see the heartbreak poisoning you from within—_

(He surfaces, smiles with the shape of a sweet song.)

_If I can unbind you from the sorrow straining your every step—_

(The anchor of his melody wraps around your waist and tugs you down to him.)

_If I can ease away the blunt ache of existence—_

(Pretty promises caress like a silk-sheathed dagger gliding over your ears.)

_If I can give you a second chance, a chance to start again—_

(You gaze into his beautiful eyes.)

_—would you take it?_

(And you fall.)

What is the cost?

_Your memories. Your humanity. You._

The siren kisses you and tells you that the sacrifice is freedom.

That is where the story ends for most — with the siren, who kisses an unsuspecting and vulnerable soul, stealing away their memories and the legs that mark them human. But they forget what comes next, and what comes before.

The South Pole is death, but everything dead was once alive.

(Heartbeats cease upon jagged daggers of ice. Blood choke in ribbons in the water. When the winter storms descend upon them, wrath known by whipping winds that swallow them in snow, their intertwined hands are torn apart and left seeking in the blinding white, searching for someone who may already be a corpse.)

Sirens are the winter wind, but before they could become who they are now, they were first lost to that blinding white themselves. They were once human — once, until the weight upon their chest dragged them to the shore, and they were promised a second chance, and they were kissed, and they woke up with nothing but a gleaming tail and a dull loneliness and a desire to become human again.

And Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, who is still lost but beginning to find herself anew—

( _Why does he want to become human?_ )

—Katara realizes this now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how to feel about this chapter, and considering I don't have a beta (no beta we die like Lu Ten/Jet), this is... questionable. But at the same time, I tried my best for this bit of exposition, and I hope it's not too confusing or pretentious with its prose.
> 
> Anyways, please leave constructive criticism if you have any, or reassurance if you thought this was actually okay! I always welcome it but I especially welcome it now, haha.


	9. in between

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At around 7770 words, this is now officially my longest work on Ao3!
> 
> *cue subdued cheering*
> 
> Yeah, I didn't think it would take me this long either.

The world has tilted on its axis.

Whenever Katara sculpts an ice blossom, she no longer lingers on the appearances, the clouds obscuring clarity and the crumples imprinted on smoothness. She no longer washes away everything, switching between solid to liquid and back again, iteration after iteration after iteration. She no longer erases her mistakes because they are not mistakes anymore — they are brushstrokes chasing blank spaces, rich and messy and free.

And she no longer looks toward nightfall with dread. There’s something new there, tentative and inexpressible, and it’s so very little, like a snowflake that’ll melt on her nail.

Yet the promise of more fills her. There are amber veins running through her now, between the known and unknown, and she waits for the day this liquid gold cools into a name, into a reality.

* * *

As soon as the moon culminates into its fullest, she slips out her bedroll and quietly dresses. Before, her preparations dragged with loathing, but she flies through them now just as she flies out the tent flap.

The slap of her boots against the ground is softened by the snow, steps light yet heavy with an emotion swelling inside her. Gratitude, maybe. Should she thank him?

She stops. Should she thank him?

The thought bears hesitation down onto her.

(Katara is walking on glass. Almost-shards crack under her foot.)

Eventually, she continues, picks herself up in the same way she always does when she falls. But she is more stilted before; she is yet accustomed to the cautiousness binding her chest and locking it in place.

* * *

_Thank you._

Two words she’s afraid to relent to.

_I hate you._

Three words that no longer ring so true.

What lies in between?

* * *

She begins with a carefully disinterested question.

“Sirens can’t bend, can they?”

He is just as nonchalant. “No. Why do you ask?”

Katara realizes her question is the wrong one, yet she can’t regret it because it’s an indulgence. The distinction between wanting and pretending is already fading; there are many ways this can slip from her control.

“When you said about my bending having to stem from myself, it—”

_It resonated with me._

“It made sense,” Katara finishes.

“Oh.”

There may be something more, but that’s all he says.

“Anyways,” she rushes on. “I just wondered how you happened to know what to say and do back then. Even though I’m a master waterbender, you—” her pride stumbles, “—seemed to know my bending better than I do. Maybe. In that one instance.”

“Are all of your compliments this weird?”

“Just answer the question.”

“Uh…” His face twists up in thought as he searches. “I don’t— it’s not something I really know.”

“Well, you definitely couldn’t have made up that bending advice.” Contemplating, she scrunches her nose and taps a finger to her chin. “Or maybe you could have?”

“No,” he says, short and succinct. And that’s that, except: “At least, I don’t think I did.”

“Then…?” As if it’ll draw the answer from him, she edges closer to the shore. He ducks his head at her stare, suddenly shy.

“I don’t know how, but it’s like I suddenly remembered this—” he gestures helplessly as if he can pull the right word to him, “—saying about roots. Maybe I heard it before from somewhere else.”

“What do you mean by somewhere else?”

He smiles without humor. “Four years is a long time to be trapped with a tail and trapped under the sea. Did you really think I would want to be trapped in the South Pole as well?”

At the indirect affront against her home, automatic defensiveness coils inside her, deep-rooted pride compelling her to uphold her dignity as a woman of the Southern Water Tribe. The South Pole — endless expanses of dark seas and pure ice, glaciers with crests that eclipse the sun, shadows as long as the valley between mountains. The South Pole — white and blue and black, so singular yet so universal, revealing colors within colors in the gradations between the sky and the water.

(The South Pole — the march of lost souls, ceaselessly wandering its infinite land.)

And yet it is so small.

She knows this herself, recognizes the restlessness that hummed in her veins ever since she realized there was an entire world beyond the ocean that bounds them. She can’t fault him for this.

“Then,” she starts, and her tongue is heavy with self-ruination and surrender. “Would you say I’m trapped?”

He studies her closely, gleans the signals of her posture and the cracks in her demeanor.

“No,” he concludes. But that is too simple for someone who shifts and turns as much as her element, and so he adjusts it with an amendment.

“Not yet.”

* * *

What he said: _Not yet_.

What he meant: _Not yet, unless you kiss me._

Katara wonders at the despondency in his response and the resignation in his voice. 

* * *

Ever-so seamlessly, he shines illuminations onto her being, like she is the sky and he is tugging up dawn from her night.

It agitates Katara, of course, that the way he does this is so effortless that she may as well just as effortlessly decide to believe in him. But it doesn’t scare her anymore, not like before. 

For once the answer to a question eluded him, and he said _not yet_ with such hesitancy, and he looked at her and his eyes reflected back a shade of gold that softened the steel-like edge to his stare. So maybe he is more than an imagining, a doubt to be purged.

Maybe he is something more than a spirit.

(He shines illuminations onto her being and yet her view of him is so dim.)

_Trapped with a fish's tail. Trapped under the sea._

After all, she’s not the only one who’s trapped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Zuko, you just couldn't resist that "not yet," couldn't you?
> 
> (I'm always a bit wary of having Zuko say something very mystical and siren-like in case it becomes repetitive. Then I remember he said something to Katara in three other scenes, and they all contain enough-ish variety that having him say this is probably fine.)
> 
> Hopefully, the next chapter will be out next week! Hopefully...

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are always appreciated!
> 
> If you want to talk to me, you can find me @my-bated-breath on Tumblr too :)


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